Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Unconventional, imaginative, nothing if not audacious, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a portrait of creativity from the inside, a serious yet playful attempt to find an artistic way to tell an emotional truth.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

While an iconic figure in France, Gainsbourg isn't a household name here in the States. But that shouldn't stop audiences from enjoying Sfar's good-looking, fanciful film.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The movie unreels his musical biography with an unending series of tastes of songs and performances. You may be surprised by how many you recognize.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

In short, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a charmer.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams

It's a comedic dramatization with a looming shadow of the surreal.

Variety by Jordan Mintzer

Both evocative and faithful in its depiction of the famed French singer's lascivious life, "Gainsbourg (vie heroique)" offers up a feast of memorable chansons and an almost endless parade of drop-dead-gorgeous muses.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

The result is a lively bout between bio-pic and fairy tale.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

At once overly episodic and playfully arty, like a TV movie made by Fellini.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

It's never more than an intro to a man who merits volumes.

Movieline by Michelle Orange

A few shots of full frontal and an actual devil to point to are poor substitutes for exposure and depth of character.

Slant Magazine by Bill Weber

Handsomely mounted and shot with an eye for nocturnal Parisian mystery by Guillaume Schiffman, Gainsbourg somewhat mercifully peters out after the grande scandale of the provocateur's reggae version of "La Marseillaise," which earned him the wrath of French patriots.

Empire

Eric Elmosnino is terrific as the louche French icon in Joann Sfar's vivid biopic. Shame about that second hour.

Boxoffice Magazine by Wade Major

Despite its ultimate lack of profundity, Gainsbourg is certain to still be a sufficiently engaging and meaningful experience to enthrall the initiated while stimulating the curiosity of the uninitiated.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

What's surprising, and ultimately disappointing, about Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the degree to which Sfar allows biopic obligations to smother his more whimsical instincts.

The Hollywood Reporter

The movie is too much an act of hero-worship for there to be any critical distance.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

The movie turns terminally wearisome and even anti-climactic with the triumph of the brain-lodging "Je T'aime" (which, alone among the movie's numbers, is heard in its original version) and Gainsbourg's descent into alcoholic dissolution.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The puppets and the music make Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life engaging, but it is also visually hectic and lacks either the dramatic intensity or the arresting insight that might have lifted it out of the pedestrian realm of the admiring biopic.

Time Out

Despite the attention the film pays to the divide between the man as the ungainly, loving second-gen immigrant versus the boozy provocateur, it's not a portrait of much psychological depth.